Damien Symonds

The brightness of your screen has to match your prints, period. Your screen is much too bright.

Oh, great! Do you have a copy of that older photo to show us?

Download the file here.

It took more steps than I wanted. The cooling filter was necessary because you are competent with white balance, whereas I suspect One Split Pea is not. Download the PSD file

Download the file here.

I was hoping to be able to do it in fewer steps, actually, but this was the best I could manage. Download the PSD file

That looks quite normal to me. The big question is, if you do the whole process manually (resize your photo to web size, then Place the watermark file and resize down to that size, then save the file) does it look any different? To me it simply looks like a matter of "too few pixels available to render such tiny text clearly".

The fourth FAQ in this post: http://ask.damiensymonds.net/topic/110-read-this-first-posting-guidelines-and-faqs/

Well spotted! Pat yourself on the back. Yes, definitely convert the template to sRGB before you start putting photos in it. But here's the key - when you go to Edit>Convert to Profile, make sure you UNcheck the flatten box.

Nice work!

It's difficult to judge the amount of matte to apply when we don't have the big dark expanse of the truck. However, is this anywhere close?

The "noise" is simply jpeg compression damage, as far as I can tell. You know what Facebook is like, and it's especially severe if you upload a too-big PNG file (FB seems to like punishing those).

If you insist on using Lightroom, DO NOT save as jpeg. Just use plain "Edit in Photoshop" to transfer your photos. There is no role for jpeg here. And when you do use TIFF, please let me know if you see the same posterization problems.

Then I can't help you. Your shitty quality results are your own fault.

For pete's sake, there should be NO jpg files in your workflow.

Oh shit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! For the love of God, fix this mess. http://www.damiensymonds.net/bridge-30-day-challenge

Save in what format?

I haven't seen that video before - THANK YOU! So good.

Let me know how you go. Remember, it will take a lot of time to do the masking properly. Don't rush it.

Download the PSD Hopefully it will be self-explanatory. I placed the photo on, positioned it, then put it in a group with a blank layer for cloning later. I started masking the group. As I found some areas that needed cloning, I returned to that layer to do so.

For your very first set of prints (before calibration) no, there is no need to use their profile. Just stick to sRGB as normal. No, number 3 has to come first. You can't calibrate until you have some prints from your lab. It doesn't matter what prints they are. They don't even need to be very good. You just need to have them in your hand, so that you can check the calibration afterwards.

Lightroom is a steaming pile of shit. If you desire any kind of quality for your photos, you MUST try the 30-day challenge. No, not Adobe RGB. Only sRGB. http://www.damiensymonds.net/2014/06/the-wide-gamut-myth.html

Nah, it's ok, I trust you. I think this will work ok. It'll take some very patient masking, and you'll need to allow plenty of time for it. This is rough and incompletely, but promising?

I can't tell at this size. Does it look better when you examine it close up?

http://www.damiensymonds.net/importing-video http://www.damiensymonds.net/faststone-video